Charles B OrtnerPartner

Charles B. Ortner, a partner in the Litigation Department, focuses his practice on the entertainment and media industries. The matters which Chuck has handled, as a litigator or as a counselor and strategic advisor, cover virtually the entire entertainment and media legal and business landscapes, including copyright, trademark, false advertising and unfair competition, contract disputes, libel and slander, privacy, internal corporate investigations, defense of class actions, senior executive contract negotiations and terminations, securities law litigation, and significant business transactions, including mergers and catalogue acquisitions. He also is the National Legal Counsel to the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc. (the GRAMMY® Award organization).

Named by The Hollywood Reporter as an industry “Power Lawyer,” Chuck is recognized as one of the top entertainment lawyers of 2014. Chambers USA, a leading independent lawyer rating service, has described Chuck as a "legendary music expert [and] one of the premier lawyers in the copyright world," and reports that he "is lauded by clients as a 'really brilliant strategist...'." Chuck also is listed in Best Lawyers in America, Expert Guides to the World’s Leading Lawyers for Technology, Media and Telecommunications Law, New York Super Lawyers and Lawdragon. He has been an invited speaker at bar association and continuing legal education programs, law school classes and seminars throughout the United States, including Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Columbia University School of Business, Boston University School of Law, Brooklyn Law School and the Annenberg Foundation.

Chuck was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Board of Trustees of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Chuck is a member of the Board of Directors of the Grammy Museum, the Born This Way Foundation (Lady Gaga’s charitable foundation), and the Board of Trustees of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. He also served as president of the Kanye West Foundation, a charity devoted to educational initiatives, and as a member of the board of trustees of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its Hollywood Bowl Committee.

Chuck served as an aide to John V. Lindsay, Mayor of the City of New York, and as an Assistant to Whitney North Seymour, Jr., United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Among the landmark entertainment industry cases Chuck has handled are:

Sanabria, et al v. National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, in which we successfully defended the GRAMMY® Award organization. The court dismissed a putative class action brought by four Latin Jazz recording artists challenging the decision by the Academy's Board of Trustees to eliminate Best Latin Jazz Album as a separate Grammy Award category in connection with the revamping of Grammy Award categories.

Humphrey v. Def Jam and CBS Records, a copyright case in which the plaintiff, relying upon voiceprint technology, falsely claimed that his voice was the voice of the rap superstar L.L. Cool J on the hit album, “Radio.” At the trial, the court dismissed the complaint, imposed monetary sanctions against the plaintiff’s attorneys and cancelled the plaintiff’s fraudulent copyright registration.

Island Records v. SST Records, in which Island Records obtained a copyright and Lanham Trademark Act injunction and seizure of infringing goods against a record company which was distributing a purported parody album. The defendant’s album packaging deceptively created the appearance that its album was a genuine U2 album.

Sanga Music v. EMI Music Publishing and Reprise Records, in which the District Court granted, and the Second Circuit affirmed, summary judgment dismissing a copyright infringement lawsuit arising out of the recording by Enya of the song, “How Can I Keep From Singing” in the hit album, “Shepherd’s Moon.” The defendants demonstrated that nearly 40 years before the lawsuit, the plaintiff songwriter had allowed her composition to enter the public domain by authorizing a friend to publish the song, without a copyright notice, in an obscure folk song periodical.

Mark Onofrio v. Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails and Interscope Records, in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the grant of summary judgment dismissing copyright claims involving five songs on the hit album, Downward Spiral, and awarded the defendants their prevailing party attorneys’ fees under the Copyright Act

PolyGram Records v. Glotzer and Benjamin, in which the court sustained PolyGram’s complaint alleging fraud claims under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 in a dispute concerning PolyGram’s investment in a privately held video distribution venture

Sylvester v. RCA Records, et al., a class action against the four largest record companies, in which the court dismissed the complaint seeking a declaratory judgment that the digital and other new media exploitation rights belonged to virtually every recording artist who had ever recorded for a major label

Dan Brown, Random House, Sony Pictures, et al. v. Lewis Purdue, in which the U.S. District Court, Second Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit which sought, among other things, to enjoin the release and distribution of the “Da Vinci Code” motion picture

MGM v. Grokster, in which we filed amicus briefs on behalf of The Recording Academy, the Recording Artists’ Coalition and over 50 leading recording artists, successfully arguing that the Grokster and similar on-line music sharing systems were engaged in massive copyright infringement

Jacques Agnant vs. Estate of Tupac Shakur, Interscope Records, et al., in which the U.S. District Court granted Summary Judgment dismissing plaintiff’s libel claims based on the content of a recording by Tupac Shakur